The goal of this Phase I SBIR project is (1) to determine the feasibility of using an Accessible Interactive Fiction (AIF) story to help middle school (grades 7-9) students who are blind or have low vision (BLV) to practice and improve their soft-skills, and (2) to provide information to their teacher to deliver more targeted instruction thereby using instructional time more efficiently. AIF is a computer-based choose-your-own-adventure story, where the student is presented with hundreds of decision points, and the story plot proceeds based on the students choice, so they can experience the outcome of their decisions in a safe, non-judgmental, virtual environment. objectives include: (1) defining the requirements for a system that enables a BLV middle school student to practice and improve soft skills, (2) developing a prototype computer-based AIF story, (3) building a prototype web service to capture the students progress and display it as skill charts in a browser for the teacher, and (4) assessing acceptability and usefulness of the system to improve soft skills with actual BLV middle school students who represent a cross-section of the underserved population. The result is a system that students use under teacher guidance, to help the student improve soft skills, which have been shown to improve education and employment outcomes for BLV students.
